Arguing, name-calling and throwing heated rhetoric around like “extortion” and “blow the whole thing up,” our so-called leaders are acting like out-of-control little kids in a sandbox.

Emad Hajjaj / Cagle Cartoons

They haven’t begun hitting each other over the head with chairs or waving weapons around on the Senate floor, but give them time.

It’s government by tantrum again. It’s government by threat and scare tactic and selective shutdown of federal programs.

It’s government by and for the people in government, instead of government by and for the people who elected them.

It’s the petty, partisan kind of government we’ve been getting for too long and the kind we can’t afford and don’t deserve.

And it’s time for the bums in Congress and the president to quit trying to score political points over the debt ceiling, and start acting like responsible adults.

The House and the Senate need to get their legislative acts together.

They need to pass the 13 appropriations bills like they’re supposed to, negotiate their differences in conference committees and then do the job they were elected to do — pass the darn legislation.

We all know Washington is not going to let the U.S. government default on Oct. 17, so let’s cut with the fear mongering and rhetoric.

All it does is make the markets fearful. It makes investors fearful. It makes retired people fearful.

By delaying and dithering and crybabying, our so-called leaders in Washington have made everyone in America nervous — and angry.

One reason the D.C. crowd can’t lead is because they’re so politically spineless. They can’t decide how to vote on anything important without reading a poll. I bet they don’t pick a tie to wear until they’ve consulted Gallup.

But leadership is not looking at polls. Leadership is leading.

My father was a leader. He went through six government shutdowns under Tip O’Neill. But Ronald Reagan led, and we came through the 1980s with a growing economy that benefitted all Americans.

We need leaders in Washington. We don’t need whiners. We don’t need fear-mongers.

We don’t need poll-watchers and wimps who can’t make a principled vote on issues of national importance like the debt ceiling, the budget or Obamacare.

If no one has the courage to stand up and lead in Washington, maybe we should default.

Maybe we need to show the rest of the world that America has finally hit bottom.

Maybe we should admit that we’ve finally become Europe or Greece. That we’ve finally become the United States of California.

All because we lack leadership.

As far as I can tell, most of the people in the United States are completely fed up with all the B.S. in D.C.

I think they’d agree with me that starting today the message from all of us to our federal politicians should be, “Get the job done or resign — all of you.”

The Idiots Against Guns in the media and Congress overdid it this time.

Not wanting to miss a chance to politicize a shooting tragedy, the anti-gun nuts went berserk Monday when news broke that a man had gone on a rampage at a D.C. naval base and killed 12 people.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle

Long before the facts were known or clear, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and their liberal cousins launched their latest gun-control jihad.

Seizing on an early report from the scene that Aaron Alexis used an AR-15 assault rifle, the Idiots Against Guns pulled out their hymnbooks and sang their favorite tune all day.

Forget the madman who pulled the trigger.

It was the evil AR-15 assault rifle that was responsible for his killing spree. And here was the latest proof that this demonic weapon of death should be banned by the federal government.

We now know the killer didn’t buy an AR-15 in Virginia, legally or illegally.

We know he didn’t pick up an AR-15 during his rampage.

And we now know the AR-15 never existed.

But the nonexistent AR-15 proved to be a godsend to the liberal media and the professional gun-grabbers in Congress.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin were at the top of their political game. They leaped in front of the TV cameras, blamed the slaughter on a “military assault rifle” and called for more gun control almost before the blood of the victims stopped flowing.

In the media, CNN won worst prize. It was so hung up on pushing the AR-15 angle that on Tuesday, after the FBI reported Alexis had used a shotgun to do his killing, CNN’s “journalists” invented a new weapon, the “AR-15 shotgun.”

Meanwhile, Monday night’s performance by Piers Morgan was pathetic.

CNN’s prime-time hysteric was so irrational, so emotionally revved up about the AR-15 being to blame for yet another mass shooting, he could barely blather about America’s need for greater gun control or interrupt his guests.

You’d think charter members of Idiots Against Guns like Morgan, Durbin and the editorial writers at The Washington Post would know by now to get the basic facts of a shooting straight before they begin politically exploiting these tragedies.

But that assumes they are interested in finding truth, not spreading propaganda. Facts and nuance and complexity mean nothing to the IAG crowd.

All mass shooting are the same to them. It’s always the guns that are to blame, not the troubled humans who pull their triggers.

And their simplistic solution to stop future mass shootings is always to call for new laws to ban military-style guns like the AR-15.

But whatever we do, we’ll never stop every mass shooting. I’ve said before, as one of my father’s Secret Service men once told me, “You can’t defend against the crazies.”

Alexis in Navy Yard, as well as Holmes in Aurora, Harris at Columbine, and many other mass shooters, were crazies. They each had serious mental problems.

Did they turn violent because they were naturally psychotic, or were they twisted by the side effects of the powerful anti-depressant drugs they were taking?

Could their rampages have been prevented by better medical care, better ways to keep guns out of the hands of crazy people, more armed guards in public places, or by ending the gun-free zones that attract young men bent on mass murder?

I don’t know if any of these common-sense methods would prevent or reduce future mass shootings. The Idiots Against Guns in government and the mainstream media obviously don’t know, either.

But they don’t want to find out. For them it’s always the gun that’s to blame — even when it doesn’t exist.

Jay Leno told his studio audience the other night that President Obama should forget his plans to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay and instead close the IRS.

The applause was instantaneous and the laughs were loud and genuine.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle

Most ordinary Americans would have whooped and hollered in favor of Leno’s idea long before they learned the IRS has been caught targeting conservative political groups and wasting millions on moronic employee-training conferences.

But the IRS is no joking matter.

The average working American — poor or rich or in-between — hates and fears the IRS for good reason.

Able to seize your bank account or house without a court order, able to shut down your business overnight, the IRS is the closest thing to the Gestapo America has ever had.

But it’s not the current IRS scandals that are the real problem. It’s not the hated tax-collecting bureaucracy itself. It’s not even whether the Obama regime used the dangerous powers of the IRS as a political weapon.

The real problem — the long-term problem and the one Republicans have to find the courage to fix — is the horrible income tax system the IRS is hired to enforce.

The federal income tax code deserves the death penalty for a lot good reasons. It’s unfair, overly complex, horribly politicized, harmful to individuals and the economy, helpful to the forces of Big Government and impossible to understand without a CPA.

It’s also a costly waste of money and time. Just complying with our unnecessarily (but deliberately) complicated federal tax system costs Americans about $430 billion a year, according to economist Arthur Laffer.

The IRS scandals are a golden opportunity for conservatives and Republicans to direct the country’s attention toward the ultimate and long-overdue goal — abolishing the IRS as we know it and drastically reforming our tax code.

We need a strong leader — now — who will stand up and lead the country down the road to radical tax reform.

Maybe it’s going to be Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Earlier this week he called for abolishing the IRS after instituting a simple flat tax that could be filled out on a postcard. Maybe it’ll be another rookie in Washington, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

The biggest problem we have is that our side — the tax-reform side — has no leader and no clear, unified message.

Should we conservatives go for a Flat Tax or a Fair Tax?

A low, simple, flat-tax percentage for all income earners, minus deductions for home mortgages and charitable deductions? Or a national sales tax of about 23 percent that would replace both the federal income tax and the payroll tax?

If my father Ronald Reagan were around today, I know what he’d do.

He’d do exactly what I’d do — get the flat-taxers and the fair-taxers together in a room and have them hash out a single tax reform program to sell to the American people.

So, sure, let’s bring the Obama Gang and its IRS lackeys to justice for their abuses.

But what we need most right now is for someone — Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Donald Trump, even Jay Leno — to convene a national tax convention that would unite our side and lead the fight for a better tax code.

Republicans can’t afford to be split on the important issue of income tax reform or miss this chance to focus on the crimes of the IRS.

The Flat Tax and the Fair Tax each have pluses and minuses that need to be debated. But in the end it really doesn’t matter which idea triumphs.

America and all Americans would be better off with either one. Either would eliminate the progressive tax system and make federal taxes simpler, fairer, smarter and apolitical. And, best of all, either one would kill the IRS as we know it — forever.

Our campaigner in chief is running around the country pushing for higher taxes and no spending cuts and crying, “The federal sky will fall!” if Congress doesn’t stop the puny 10 percent sequester from happening.

In Washington the incompetents and cowards in Congress can’t get our fiscal house in order, and they’re too stupid or self-serving to realize they are wrecking the greatest economic machine humans have ever created.

We have a budget to balance and an immigration problem. We’re spending trillions we don’t have and promising tens of trillions more in benefits our grandchildren can never repay.

And what are many of my fellow Republicans and conservatives in Washington — and the media — doing while America is being towed down the road to Greece?

They’re thrashing around in the political weeds, wasting their breath complaining about petty political things that may boost the ratings of talk shows but are otherwise meaningless.

For example, one of the outrages of the week involves the White House being accused of selling access to President Obama in exchange for $500,000 donations to his latest pet advocacy group.

Are these Republican and conservative friends of mine kidding? Were they born yesterday?

The parties in power in Washington have been selling access to their powers and privileges forever.

That’s why libertarians want to keep the federal government as small, weak and limited as possible, so that when Washington politicians are bought off, they can do as little harm to the country as possible.

Another example this week of Republicans making a partisan mountain out of a molehill is their attack on former Obama press mouthpiece Robert Gibbs for not telling reporters what he knew about the administration’s secret drone program.

Conservatives looking for dirt on Obama and liberal commentators like Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart went to town over Gibbs’ silence.

But it was just another petty complaint du jour. The White House doesn’t tell reporters everything it’s doing or planning. It never did, whether it was the date for D-Day, our U-2 flights over the USSR or the raid to kill Osama.

My father invaded Grenada and didn’t tell Congress in advance. He even forgot to tip off his buddy Margaret Thatcher, whose airspace had to be crossed by our warplanes.

The most ridiculous complaint of the week made by people on our side of the political fence was their reaction to Michelle Obama’s appearance on the Oscars broadcast Sunday night.

They acted like it was an impeachable offense. But the first lady handing out a best-picture award at an Oscar ceremony is not something Republicans should waste a second of their time on.

It’s not new and not a Democrat thing. On Jan. 20, 1985, Ronald Reagan — who, if I recall, was a Republican — performed the opening coin toss for the Super Bowl game via television from the White House.

The first lady’s appearance at the Oscars was something my father and my mother — his first wife, Academy Award-winning actress Jane Wyman — would have applauded, not booed.

It’s time for Republicans and conservatives to get serious. The country is burning down like ancient Rome, but we’re wasting our time and energy attacking Democrats for petty or nonexistent crimes that do nothing but hike TV ratings and give partisan bloggers fresh ammunition to shoot in the air.

It’s time for us to start fighting about the things that really matter. It’s time to come out of the weeds and start concentrating on the stuff that matters to the guy with no job or the business owner with high taxes, not the stupid stuff like Michelle Obama’s “Oscar Moment.”

Now, thanks to our dysfunctional and devious Congress, we have junk laws like the “Taxpayer Relief Act.”

Junk laws are really nothing new. The people we send to Washington to represent us have been passing legislation larded with pork or special privileges for their friends in business, agriculture and labor since the country was born.

Adam Zyglis / Buffalo News

Insiders have always known how this cynical bipartisan game is played. But now, thanks to the failure of Congress to deal with the government debt crisis it in large part created, the average American is starting to become aware of these junk bills.

Even the liberal media were outraged by what went on when Congress passed the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012″ — which, ironically, raised the taxes of every working American by 2 percent by returning the Social Security tax to its usual 6.2 percent level.

The “Fiscal Cliff Bill” did virtually nothing to solve the federal government’s money problems or create a single job. But it was junked up with nearly $70 billion of pure pork — including tax credits for the owners of NASCAR racetracks, wind turbine makers, Hollywood moviemakers and rum-makers in Puerto Rico.

While President Obama was promising to raise taxes on the rich but really shafting the working poor, congressional folk were so busy loading up the “Fiscal Cliff Bill” with presents for their friends that they forgot to pass the relief bill to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Members of Congress are grandmasters of deceit and dishonesty. Taking maximum advantage of every crisis or disaster that comes along, they attach their favorite pieces of pork to dishonestly named bills such as the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012″ and the “Affordable Healthcare Act.”

Members know these big important super-bills have to pass to avert a crisis, so they junk them up with their $200 million “Bridges to Nowhere” and their $59 million tax credits for the algae-growing industry.

A perfect example of how Congress gets its junk bills passed has to with the way it funds FEMA. Congress always underfunds the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Why?

Because Congress knows each year there will always be a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy that FEMA will need billions of federal dollars to address.

And when FEMA comes asking for emergency funding, members of Congress will clean out their closets and throw every piece of junk legislation they have into the relief bill, which they know will automatically pass without scrutiny.

Another reason we get junk laws is that few members of Congress actually read these monster bills before they vote for them. Nancy Pelosi’s career quote is going to be her comment on the healthcare bill, “But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”

Law-making is not supposed to work that way. There’s a rule in Congress that a bill has to be posted for 48 hours before it can be voted on. But that rule has become a joke.

Just watch C-SPAN the next time a vote is being taken in the House. You’ll probably hear someone say something like, “Under suspension of the rule, we’ll now vote.”

What arcane parliamentary rule are they talking about? The 48-hour rule. No wonder Congress is always finding out after they vote what they just voted for. If members of Congress don’t read the damn bill, they shouldn’t vote on it.

I’m getting real tired of people saying, “My guy’s a good guy and your guy’s a bad guy.” They’re all acting like bad guys.

We need to start holding every member of Congress accountable. And we need more up-and-down votes in Congress, so that the next important piece of legislation doesn’t become another “Fiscal Cliff Junk Bill.”

The latest horror movie from Washington — “The Fiscal Cliff” — finally came to an exciting end in the early hours of 2013.

But after two years did its climax — more taxes, more spending and more chicken-livered can-kicking by our politicians — really shock any of you over the age of six?

Jeff Parker / Florida Today

Didn’t think so.

Spinning the budget deal as a last-minute victory for the American people, the White House and Congress are saying that all the actors knuckled down, did the right thing and created a compromise budget deal that kept the country from going over the fiscal cliff.

Bull. As usual.

The Washington In-Crowd didn’t save the country from going over the fiscal cliff, which of course they created in the first place. They just shoved the edge of the cliff a couple of months down the road.

After two years of arguing over taxes, the federal debt, government spending and how to fix the ticking fiscal time bombs of Social Security and Medicare, the professional politicians solved nothing.

They merely did the easy, politically painless stuff.

They raised tax rates from 35 percent to 39.6 on the so-called rich who make more than $400,000 individually or $450,000 as a couple. They extended unemployment benefits for a year.

They extended the Bush-era tax cuts and made them permanent, something even President Obama secretly favored because he knows that ending them would throw the economy into another recession.

But the Washington In-Crowd failed the American people yet again. They didn’t reduce the deficit by a single dollar. They didn’t create a single job. They didn’t cut or cap federal spending. They did nothing about Social Security or Medicare.

The revenues they’ll bring into federal coffers with their higher taxes on the rich will be spent by the end of the week. They were so busy doing the easy stuff they never even got around to passing a bill to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Meanwhile, while everyone was watching the chessboard to see how high taxes were going to be jacked up on the rich and successful, Congress shafted the middle class and the working poor by voting to let President Obama’s two-year-old, 2 percent payroll-tax cut expire.

The Obamamedia won’t be making a big deal out of it, of course, but nearly everyone who earns a paycheck was given a tax hike. According to the Tax Policy Center, about 77 percent of households making between $50,000 and $200,000 will be paying higher FICA taxes in 2013.

On average, starting this week, about $1,600 of an individual’s income will again be taken from his or her paycheck annually and sent directly to the bankrupt coffers of Social Security.

President Obama and the advocates of Bigger Government were the winners in our latest fiscal melodrama. Obama set the agenda and he got what he wanted. Republicans who wanted real spending cuts or some semblance of fiscal responsibility got rolled.

In two months, it’ll be time for Congress to vote on raising the federal debt ceiling. We’ll hear the same arguments and scare stories from the White House and the media about what will happen if we don’t allow the Washington In-Crowd to borrow a few more trillion dollars to keep their borrowing-and-spending racket going.

America will find itself being forced to watch another Washington horror flick. And unless voters wake up and the GOP gets its act together, “Fiscal Cliff, Part 2″ is going to have the same unhappy ending for conservatives as the original.

Once upon a time — in 1988 and 1998 to be exact — the United States was the best country for a baby to be born and raised in, at least according to The Economist magazine.

Eric Allie / PoliticalCartoons.com

But the 2013 edition of the magazine’s “where-to-be-born” index has us down at No. 16 — tied with Germany and one spot ahead of the United Arab Emirates.

Switzerland, Australia, Norway, Sweden and Denmark — nice countries but not exactly world famous as destinations for millions of people seeking opportunity — are ranked 1 through 5.

The Economist’s annual ranking tries to quantify what country “will provide the best opportunities for a healthy, safe and prosperous life in the years ahead.”

It crunches and weighs the numbers for 11 indicators — everything from geography and demography to GDP per capita, the cost of living and future economic growth prospects. And, unfortunately for the United States, it weighs government debt.

The Economist doesn’t factor a debt-related reason America will likely continue to slide in these rankings — no one today has any confidence in our political leaders to solve our economic problems.

Our economy is stuck on a reef. Growth is too low. The prospects of a real recovery coming anytime soon are dim and getting dimmer, not brighter.

It’s so bad, even illegal aliens are losing confidence in America and leaving the country. And Citigroup just announced it is laying off 11,000 employees. Obviously, its bosses don’t have much hope for a better future, either.

Back in the 1980s, we had more confidence in our political leaders because they actually earned it from time to time.

When my father was in the White House and Democrats controlled Congress, both parties fought bitterly with each other.

But when it came time to work out a solution to get the economy moving forward, they sat down and cut deals to lower or simplify taxes and to ease or eliminate onerous regulations.

In the 1990s, the roles were reversed. Clinton was president, Republicans ran Congress and partisanship was fierce. But when they had to do it, the leaders of both parties worked out a way to balance the budget and reform welfare.

In the old days, conservatives and liberals — loyal R’s and die-hard D’s — buried their hatchets and ultimately found a way to work together.

Today, we don’t seem to even want both parties to cooperate. We demonize the other side so much we can’t imagine ever working with them to fix the Capitol Building’s roof, much less the economy.

Fast-forward to 2012. Does anyone have confidence in our leaders to work together to pull the Supertanker of State off the reef, much less turn it around?

We know what makes America work better for everyone today and in the future — or we used to. It’s when government is smaller and the private sector is bigger, not vice versa.

The American people have lost confidence in their leaders for good reasons. Politicians from both parties in Washington have to join to clean up the economic mess they created or that confidence will never be restored.

If they don’t do it soon, being ranked No. 16 on The Economist’s “best place to be born” index will look pretty good to our grandkids.

How many times did I hear a Republican talk about how their party’s deep bench of future all-stars will return it to power in Washington in four years?

But all the Ryans, Rubios, Bushes, Haleys and Christies in America can’t put the GOP — or the country — back together again.

The GOP is a wreck — and not just in California, where the party’s registration is now below 30 percent.

Look how easily the Republican Party managed to turn what should have been a sure victory over an incompetent and dangerous incumbent into an embarrassing defeat.

First they tore each other to shreds in a bitter primary, smearing their eventual nominee in debates as a rich, uncaring profiteer who put working people out on the street and shipped their jobs overseas.

Then, while Obama’s ads in the battleground states reinforced the Republican-made caricature of Mitt, the Romney campaign did just about everything wrong.

It squandered the GOP convention and tried to make their candidate into “Mitt the Moderate.” Team Romney also shunned their natural allies in talk radio and didn’t reach out for help from conservatives like me.

I would have been glad to help the Romney campaign in Ohio or Pennsylvania, where I worked for my father in 1980. I offered, but the phone never rang. It didn’t ring for Bill O’Reilly or for the other major radio and TV talk shows, either.

But Team Romney’s biggest mistake was playing prevent defense after his big victory in the first debate. It was a terrible, fatal blunder.

Instead of hammering away at the horror of Obamacare, the cover-up in Benghazi and President Eye-Candy’s four years of failure, Romney ran the last five weeks hoping the clock would run out before Obama could recover.

But you don’t play prevent defense when you are running in second place in Ohio, Virginia, Florida — and Tuesday’s results proved it.

Hurricane Sandy struck Mitt a final blow, giving Obama the chance to look presidential and making Mitt disappear from the media for four days.

But give credit to Obama’s Chicago Gang. They ran a much better campaign — on the ground and in the air. They got out the vote and Obama got out his message of class envy and federal entitlements for all, without any trouble from his toadies in the media.

Now bigger deficits, higher taxes and a stagnant economy lie ahead for as far as the eye can see. And socialized medicine — which my father warned was coming to America 50 years ago — is going to soon become a reality via Obamacare.

Team Romney blew an easy win because it had a poor game plan. But it also lost because the Republican Party is all talk and no guts when it comes to fighting for real conservatism — Ronald Reagan conservatism.

GOP bigwigs constantly praise my father. For years they’ve used him to suck true conservatives into the party, but they’ve never really embraced Reaganism or its ideals.

They didn’t in the 1980s and they still don’t today. They only talk about him. The party bosses don’t really think like him.

Most of those Republican candidates who lost Tuesday played the same game of pretend. “I’m like Ronald Reagan!” “No, I’m like Ronald Reagan!”

But most of them aren’t like my father. They weren’t waving the “bold colors” of real conservatism he talked about in 1975. The banners of the losers — like Mitt’s — were colored in “pale pastels.”

The GOP needs a new playbook. Unless it starts embracing my father’s conservative ideals instead of just paying lip service to them, the so-called “Party of Ronald Reagan” may never win another national election.

That’s what the smug guy in the TV commercial says when he’s praising the virtues of his plug-in hybrid and boasting that he hasn’t seen a gas pump in months.

You might love your Chevy Volt, too — if you could afford to buy one.

Mike Keefe / PoliticalCartoons.com

The GM Volt, aka the Green Edsel, is not just an overly engineered, overly expensive, overweight and impractical car than runs on electricity and gasoline.

It’s a Solyndra on Wheels. The Volt only exists because it’s been so heavily discounted by GM and subsidized by the federal government.

So far the Volt has cost Government Motors about twice as much per car to develop and make than its sticker price, which is $40,000. On top of that savings, the consumer gets a $7,500 federal tax credit for being so green — or maybe so naive.

Yet the Volt’s ultimate price — $32,500 for what is essentially an electrified and souped-up $17,000 Chevy Cruze — is still so high that only those in the top 7 percent of all income earners will buy it.

The average per capita income of Volt buyers is $172,000 — the income bracket that usually drives a BMW or a Mercedes.

In other words, the average American — who makes less than $40,000 a year — is subsidizing a bunch of rich people so they can hug themselves for saving the planet (by buying a car that runs for about 35 miles on electricity generated by coal-fired power plants before Exxon premium gas has to take over).

Despite these subsidies and low-cost lease deals, Volt sales so far in 2012 are 13,500, far below the 45,000 cars GM hoped to sell this year in America alone.

Experts say GM will have to sell about 120,000 Volts in five years to begin covering its development costs. Good luck, GM. I don’t think there are that many celebrities in Hollywood who need a third car.

After Romney replaces Obama this fall, let’s hope he’ll pull the government plug on the Volt and concentrate on making us energy independent.

Killing the Volt and any other electric-car boondoggles would be a good thing, and not just because it’d save money the federal government doesn’t have. The popularity of electric-propelled cars that raise miles-per-gallon averages has given some of our more “progressive” governments some dangerous ideas.

State and local governments worry that if gasoline sales decline they’ll be deprived of billions of dollars in revenue from gas taxes that now are used to maintain roads or subsidize mass transit.

To make up for lost revenues from hybrids and electric cars in the future, Oregon and San Francisco already have been looking into the idea of charging drivers a tax per each mile driven.

Cars would be fitted with GPS navigation systems that track how far they drive. Then drivers would be billed accordingly — about a penny a mile, depending on where and when you rack up the mileage.

Needless to say, this Orwellian idea came from Europe, and the Obama administration has been exploring it too.

So let’s see what’s going on here. The government greenies want you to pay extra to drive an electric car that’s more fuel efficient, then they charge you for the miles you drive anyway?

What red-blooded, road-loving American driver wants a government GPS implanted in his car with some bureaucrat looking at it to see how many miles he’s driving?

Not me. I own a Ford Expedition. I get 12.5 miles per gallon. I love it. When it gets too old, I’ll buy a new one.

The government is going to get us one way or the other. I say, go out and buy the biggest damn SUV you want. Enjoy your life. Light a cigar. Step on the gas. And don’t waste a watt on a Volt.

When Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare, he didn’t just betray conservatives.

His twisted legal logic also betrayed the American people by opening the door to the largest expansion of federal power since Social Security was enacted.

Roberts and his new liberal soul-mates decided it’s OK for the federal government to tax us if we don’t do what Washington’s bullies and nannies want us to do — or think is good for us.

Eric Allie / Cagle Cartoons

Lord knows, the feds have already taxed us to death — and after death, too — on everything from capital gains to booze. If they can “penalize” us for not buying health care insurance, what’s next?

Tax us if we don’t buy a smaller house? If we don’t buy an electric car? How about if we don’t buy exercise equipment? Or eat broccoli? Or wear Earth Shoes or condoms? There’ll be no end to it.

The principle of limited government — now there’s a quaint 18th-century idea — in Washington has been passe since Calvin Coolidge left town. But as my libertarian friend, Judge Andrew Napolitano of Fox News said this week, the Obamacare decision has created a new opportunity for unlimited government.

You don’t have to be a constitutional scholar like the judge to know that the Supreme Court has set a horrible precedent. But that judicial train wreck has left Union Station. It’s time to stop whining and get to work.

The only way we can derail Obamacare and the Even Bigger Government Express is by firing the engineer in chief and electing a Congress that will legislatively undo the damage the Supreme Court has done to individual liberty.

It won’t be easy. But the Fourth of July holiday is the perfect time for voters to start another revolution to win back the freedoms our Founding Fathers fought for 236 years ago.

They risked their lives and fortunes to secure liberty for the individual and put government in its place. They knew the only way people can be free is when their government is kept small, weak and fragmented. And when it takes orders from the people instead of the other way around.

We hear precious little praise for the principle of limited government in 2012 America. I’m sorry to say that the last president who had a deep understanding of the proper relationship between government and a free people was my father, Ronald Reagan.

He knew the spirit of freedom had to be kept alive by the people. In a 1961, when his earliest political speeches were arguing against the legislation that eventually created Medicare, he warned us that freedom is not in the DNA of Americans, it is in our hearts and minds.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

On this Independence Day we need to get fired up about freedom and start fighting for it — at home. Every single American who’s outraged by the Obamacare decision should be energized to show up and vote this fall. And the next dozen falls. If we don’t starting fighting for our freedom now, we deserve to lose it.